Brand Reinforcement
I’ve seen conversations constantly come up about the designs we use at 1Hive and how to improve our decentralized brand management, better brand consistency, etc. And I couldn’t help but think of some possible solutions; both to calm the waters with the discussions and to up our design-game.
I think the first step to improving our Decentralized Brand Management in general, would be to start by reinforcing the design guidelines, trying to develop more assets for designers to use and being a bit more specific with the best practices so we can give the public the image that 1hive deserves.
Decentralization encourages free thinking and the use of creative solutions
That said, I want to make it clear that I do not intend to oppress or inhibit the creativity of others; these guidelines are not meant to be tremendously strict, but neither are they meant to be taken lightly.
Brand guidelines should be flexible enough for designers to be creative, but rigid enough to keep your brand easily recognizable. Consistency is key, especially if you need the brand to extend across multiple media platforms.
I’ve been talking with @borisblock about creating a Brand Guidelines Book, which would contain all the information needed to work in a simple way. As well as we would like to work on expanding the assets, giving the community and designers more material with which they can create quality content.
I would like to use this post to make a call to action to designers who want to potentially form a small temporary swarm to research and develop these assets for the use of the entire community.
And yeah, you may have thought that brand guidelines are only for designers, but they go far beyond that. An effective brand identity is beneficial for all users, they function as a resource that everyone within the DAO can use to better understand how to represent 1Hive.
Strong brand guidelines are more than a series of images with ticks and crosses to represent the dos and don’ts of the identity. They should allow the user to apply the brand successfully outside the rigorously constructed examples; they should let the user understand how to create a compelling piece of content to solve a problem.
The visual identity goes hand in hand with the vision and values of 1Hive, and we want to support it with design solutions that fit the personality of the DAO. That’s why we also want to empower users with a variety of assets so that anyone can feel comfortable and ready to create content, automatically connecting with who we are. By achieving that simple and friendly connection we bring 1Hive closer to a decentralized brand environment.
Brand Book Content (Guidelines)
- An overview of 1Hive history, vision, personality and key values.
- Iconography
- Margin usage
- Image style / photography
- Typography: (font styles, sizes, and spacing)
- Logo usage
- Do’s and Dont’s
- Voice and tone
*Great examples of Brand Guidelines: Uber, Red Cross
Celeste Integration
With the recent integration of Celeste to the 1Hive ecosystem, I’ve been thinking that it could be interesting that eventually these brand guidelines could be curated in Celeste, so that they can be changed over time with ease, reaching consensus among the community.
I think it is a unique solution, and it fits to have a more accurate decentralized brand management, I would like to know what the community thinks about it.
Social-Curation Channel
With the recent decrease in cred on the #design channel, I thought of a way to incentivize users to create valuable content and continue to design marketing solutions that we can use. I feel that the social curation channel can be used as an extra cred incentive for designers who submit designs that we end up using in our social media.
I feel there should be a fair balance of cred in the #design channel, not so high as to be abused, but not so low that people don’t feel motivated to contribute. It should be a middle ground where cred gamers/spammers don’t find it worth it. That’s why I want to encourage people to create content more in line with our identity, which will be rewarded with extra credit.
For that we would have to have a small team, who would be in charge of selecting the designs that will end up in social-curation. Precisely in this case, the Brand Guidelines will make our job easier, both for the content curators and the creators themselves.
Here are some links that may be helpful to better understand the subject: